Duda Forum on Historic Preservation and Sustainability
Next weekend San Antonio will host the Second Annual Duda Forum on Historic Preservation and Sustainability with a reception Friday evening November 15 and a daylong program on Saturday November 16 at Plaza des Armas behind City Hall. You can register and get info HERE. The subject is the design of infill in historic areas and additions to historic buildings. This is an issue that has been discussed by some of the participants for over twenty years, especially given the potential conflict between Secretary of the Interior Standard #3 which says in part “changes that create a false sense of historic development…will not be undertaken.” and Standard #9 which says in part “new work will be differentiated from the old and will be compatible.”
When the Standards were first adopted almost fifty years ago, the tendency was to use contemporary, modern design for additions and infill, as in this famous Brooklyn Heights Jehovah’s Witness Building, wherein highly compatible Georgian and Victorian designs were rejected for a dramatically different modernism. By the early 1990s, the pendulum had swung the other way and historically styled additions nearly indistinguishable from the original became popular.
The section on the left is c. 1990 while the section on the right is c. 1890.
In a city with a century and a half of preservation history, the topic of infill and additions has many examples, like the restoration of the Pearl Brewery, which includes new designs and replications of lost buildings.
Restored, along with all of the equipment in the brewery, repurposed into the landscape.
Replica of brewery building destroyed by fire in 2003. Some rubble reused.
The event is sponsored by the Texas Historical Foundation and the University of Notre Dame. Notre Dame Professor Steven Semes is part of the panel, and I have been following him for 18 years, as you can see by this 2006 blog I wrote, and this one from five years later with lots more photographic examples. We have worked together on a number of things, from a late 2006 panel in Milwaukee for the National Trust to the Castroville survey last summer. I know he will ask me about the new Alamo museum in the repurposed Woolworth and Crockett buildings, since our 2019 suggested design (really a massing study by Alamo Architects) does indeed seem to suggest the current design.
We will also have a panel talking about infill in historic districts, a challenge that has been met quite well in several San Antonio communities, like King William.
Looks to be a good event so if you are in town next weekend, sign up!
Augmented Reality Arrives
Six months ago I wrote another blog about Authenticity and Technology (view here). Part of my impulse was reading Colin Ellard and part was the threat to Alamo Plaza from those who think it should look only like 1836.